war that had just begun.
'Why, are you a Reb, Stove?' Lee asked, in puzzlement.
'I'm a Carolina boy,' Stove reminded him; but his appetite for discussion of the coming conflict had suddenly diminished.
'We've still got the Comanches to fight, here in Texas,' Call reminded them. 'I suppose they're Yankees enough for me.' 'But everybody's going to war, Captain--t's the talk, up and down the street,' Stove Jones said. 'There'll be some grand battles before this is settled.' 'Some grand battles and some grand dying,' Augustus said. He had come quietly up to where Call and the two men were talking. His arrival, so soon, took Call by surprise, though Augustus did not seem quite as sad as he had been in the rooming house.
'Nell's gone,' Gus added, before Call could ask. 'She opened her eyes and died. I never had a chance to ask her if she needed anything. Why will people die on days this pretty?' Sunlight poured down on them; the sky was cloudless and the air soft. No one had an answer to Gus's question. Darkness and death seemed far away; but war had been declared between South and North, and Nellie McCrae lay dead not two blocks away.
'What are you, Gus, Yank or Reb?' Lee Hitch asked, putting the question cautiously, as if afraid of the answer he might receive.
'I'm a Texas Ranger with a good wife to bury, Lee,' Gus said. 'Will you go find Deets and Pea for me? I'd like to get them started on the grave.' 'We'll find them--we'll help too, Gus,' Lee assured him.
Call and Augustus walked briskly to the lots and caught their horses. It was a short walk to the Governor's office, but if they walked everybody they met would try to sound them out about the war, an intrusion they wanted to avoid.
'Remember what Scull said, when he first told us war was coming?' Call asked.
''Brother against brother and father against son,'' that's what I remember,' Augustus replied.
'He was accurate too,' Call said. 'It's happened right here in the troop, and the news not an hour old.' Augustus looked puzzled.
'You mean there's Yankees in the company?' he asked.
'Lee Hitch,' Call said. 'And Stove is a Reb.' 'My Lord, that's right,' Augustus said.
'Lee's from the North.' Governor Clark stood by a window, looking out at the sunlit hills, when the two rangers were admitted to his office. He was a spare, solemn executive; no one could remember having heard him joke. He was patient, though, and dutiful to a fault. No piece of daily business was left unfinished; Gus and Call themselves had seen lamplight in the Governor's office well past midnight, as the Governor attended, paper by paper, to the tasks he had set himself for the day.
In the streets, men, most of them Rebels, were rejoicing. All of them assumed that the imperious Yankees would soon be whipped. Governor Clark was not rejoicing.
'Captain McCrae, how's your wife?' the Governor asked.
'She just died, Governor,' Gus said.
'I would have excused you from this meeting, had I known that,' Governor Clark said.
'There would be no reason to, Governor,' Gus said. 'There's nothing I can do for Nellie now except get a deep grave dug.' 'If I had money to invest, which I don't, I'd invest it in mortuaries,' the Governor said. 'Ten thousand grave diggers won't be enough to bury the dead from this war, once it starts. There's a world of money to be made in the mortuary trade just now, and I expect the Yankees will make the most of it, damn them.' 'I guess that means you're a Reb, Governor,' Gus said.
'Up to today I've just been an American citizen, which is what I'd prefer to stay,' Governor Clark said. 'Now I doubt I'll have the luxury. Do you know your history, gentlemen?' There was a long silence. Call and Augustus both felt uneasy.
'We're not studied men, Governor,' Call admitted, eventually.
'I'm so ignorant myself I hate to talk much,' Augustus said. The remark annoyed Call--in private Augustus bragged about his extensive schooling, even claiming a sound knowledge of the Latin language. When Captain Scull was around, Augustus moderated his bragging, it being clear that Captain Scull .was extensively schooled.
Augustus was not confident enough, though, to attempt a display of learning with Governor Clark looking at him severely.
'Civil wars are the bloodiest, that's my point, gentlemen,' the Governor said. 'There was Cromwell. There were the French. People were torn apart in the streets of Paris.' 'Torn to bits, sir?' Gus asked.
'Torn to bits and fed to dogs,' the Governor said. 'It was as bad or worse as what our friends the Comanches do.' 'Surely this will just be armies fighting, won't it?' Call asked. Though he had read most of his Napoleon book, there was nothing in it about people being torn to bits in the streets.
'I hope so, Captain,' the Governor said.
'But it's war--in war you can't expect tea parties.' 'Who do you think will win, Governor?' Call asked. He had lived his whole life in Texas. The work of rangering had taken him to New Mexico and old Mexico and, a time or two, into Indian Territory; but of the rest of America he knew nothing. He did know that almost all their goods and equipment came from the North.
He assumed it was a rich place, but he had no sense of it, nor, for that matter, much sense of the South. He had known or encountered men from most of the states--f Georgia and Alabama, from Tennessee and Kentucky and Missouri, from Pennsylvania and Virginia and Massachusetts--but he didn't know those places. He knew that the East had factories; but the nearest thing to a factory that he himself had ever seen was a lumber mill. He knew that the Southern boys, the Rebs, without exception assumed they could whip the Yankees-- rout them, in fact. But Captain Scull, whose opinion he respected, scorned the South and its soldiers. 'Fops,' he had called them.
Call was not sure what a fop was, but Captain Scull had uttered the ^w with a sort of casual contempt, a scorn Call still remembered. Captain Scull seemed to feel himself equal to any number of Southern fops.
'Nobody will win, but I expect the North will prevail,' the Governor said. 'But they won't win tomorrow, or next year either, and probably not the year after. Meanwhile we've still got settlers to defend and a border
